Senbazuru
by etmuse
Summary: Merlin is looking for a miracle, and he'll try anything. Anything. Written for challenge #5 on merlinxarthur on LJ.


Arthur pushed open the door to Merlin's flat, bracing himself for whatever he might find on the other side. The last few months had been a parade of crystals and chanting and ever more peculiar rituals. And Arthur didn't have the heart to stop him.

The living room door was open, muffled sounds of frustration drifting out. Arthur set down his briefcase, shrugged off his jacket and toed off his shoes before following the noises.

Merlin was sitting in the middle of the floor, the coffee table pushed against one wall. A book lay open in front of him, and everywhere around him were scattered pieces of paper, in varying levels of crumpledness. Merlin was working intently on folding an as of yet pristine sheet in front of him in half, and didn't appear to have noticed Arthur coming in.

Arthur watched for a few moments as Merlin folded the paper again, and again, before growling in annoyance, balling the paper in his fist and tossing it to join the others.

"Merlin," Arthur said quietly, stepping forward and halting Merlin's move towards the next sheet of paper in his stack. "What is this?"

Merlin twisted and looked up at him, and the despairing look on his face broke Arthur's heart. Every time, every damn time, Merlin would pour all of his hopes into some new legend, or theory, or superstition, only to come crashing down to earth when there was no effect.

"Seba zorro," Merlin said brokenly – or rather that's what Arthur thought he said. Merlin's voice was croaky, and Arthur could only presume that enough frustrated grunts and growls to account for every ruined sheet of paper in the room was the cause.

Kicking a few pieces of paper out of the way, Arthur sank to the floor next to Merlin and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Merlin leaned into him easily, resting his head on Arthur's shoulder. "You're going to have to run that one past me again," Arthur said softly, pressing a chaste kiss to Merlin's forehead.

Merlin cleared his throat. "Senbazuru," he said more clearly. "It's Japanese."

Arthur didn't even stop to ask where he'd heard about this one. The internet, the old man down at the herbal remedies centre, a book from the library; Merlin had tried them all. He looked at the open page of the book. Written across the top in large, bold letters was the word 'Crane'.

"And it involves…" He squinted at the rest of the page, which was covered in diagrams with dotted lines and little arrows. "Folding paper?"

Merlin nodded against his chest. "Origami cranes, yes." He heaved a deep sigh and straightened up to look Arthur in the face. "A thousand of them, and then your wish is granted." His arm waved a circle around the room and the muscles in his throat worked as he swallowed hard. "But as you can see, I can't even fold _one_."

His eyes glistened, and Arthur tugged him in tight against him, stroking a hand up and down Merlin's back as he gulped against Arthur's neck. "What sort of useless son am I," he sniffed, "if I can't even fold some bits of paper?"

"You're a wonderful son," Arthur soothed, "and you know it. No one could have done more for her than you have." Merlin had been running himself ragged these past months, going to work, visiting with his mother, and doing everything he could think up to induce a miracle cure.

"But I have to _find_ something, _do_ something," Merlin said in a small voice, his arms snaking tightly around Arthur's waist. "I can't just give up on her. I _won't_."

Arthur closed his eyes and bit his lip, determined to hold it together. Hunith had become like a mother to him, too, in the years since that first time Merlin had taken him home to meet her. He didn't want to give up, didn't want to lose her, but there came a point where nothing more could be done. And for Hunith, that point had come three months ago when the doctors had delivered the news that the tumours had spread, and weren't reacting to treatment.

Nothing he and Merlin had done since had changed that, and it shattered his heart a little more every time another doctor's visit went past with no good news. Crushed him every time he saw what it did to Merlin, every time he watched him build up his hopes only to land with a bump.

"We'll find something," he whispered into Merlin's hair, knowing it was a lie, knowing that the chances of any of these 'alternative' treatments working were getting slimmer and slimmer the more outlandish and obscure they went, but completely unable to quash Merlin's optimism that something, _something_, could still be done. "I promise."

It wasn't until later, hours later, when he was curled up with Merlin in bed, that the idea hit him. And when it did, he wondered why he hadn't thought of it earlier.

It was a bit daft, and it was never going to really _work_, but if it put a smile on Merlin's face, if only for a second, he'd give it a shot.

Merlin was soundly asleep, so Arthur carefully extracted himself from their embrace and tiptoed back into the living room. The book was still sitting on the coffee table, abandoned after they'd tidied all of the discarded paper into the recycling bin.

Flicking the lamp on, Arthur flicked through the book to the right page and snagged a sheet of paper from the pile remaining. Ten minutes, and two discarded attempts, later, he held up something that looked reassuringly like the picture in the book; he wasn't quite so sure that it resembled an actual crane in any way, but the book was clearly what mattered.

He could do this.

One became two, became five, became ten. He ran out of paper after twenty-one, and glanced at the same time at the clock. It was nearly 4am, and he had a meeting with the board at ten.

He looked around at the scatter of origami cranes on the tabletop and the floor around him, and on a snap decision, gathered them all up into a pile, which he carried out and tucked into his briefcase. He didn't want Merlin to know about this, not yet. Not until he was done. He couldn't bear to see the disappointment in his eyes if the supposedly mystical 1000 never quite materialised.

Even though he was determined now that they would.

It was a very tired, but accomplished, Arthur that ushered Merlin in the front door of Arthur's flat nearly three weeks later. It had taken some effort, not least keeping it from Merlin, who had been becoming increasingly despondent when no new methods for him to try were forthcoming despite his searches. Thankfully for Arthur, Merlin was, and had always been, a solid sleeper, and Arthur had plenty of practise at sneaking out of bed at Merlin's flat when he was plagued by insomnia.

He'd learned to subsist on almost no sleep, taking catnaps at his desk at lunchtime when the deprivation just got too much. His living room – which had quickly become his base when it became clear that anywhere at Merlin's just wasn't going to work - had slowly been taken over by the mass of paper birds. The folding process had almost become automatic; Arthur was fairly sure he could actually create a paper crane in his sleep by now, and by the end he'd had it down to barely a minute and a half per crane.

But the secrecy, and the sleep deprivation, and the aching fingers, were all forgotten the moment he opened the living room door and pulled Merlin through it, the instant he saw the look on Merlin's face as he realised what he'd done.

"Arthur, I…" Merlin turned to him, eyes glassy.

"Shh." Arthur put his finger to Merlin's lips and turned him to face the amassed cranes, an arm around his waist. "Just make the wish."


End file.
